Food Tank: The Food Think Tank Launches Operations

On January 10, the Food Tank: The Food Think Tank officially began operations. The group bills itself as an agnostic and science-based resource on food and agriculture issues.

The organization was co-founded by food and agriculture experts, Ellen Gustafson and Danielle Nierenberg, in order to bring a bold new voice in bringing attention to issues such as the fact that more than 1 billion people are obese, yet nearly 1 billion people go to bed hungry every night, while 2 billion suffer from micronutrient deficiencies. Other issues include food price speculation and massive consolidation of farms and companies that has led to price spikes and poverty in the developing world; the impacts of climate change; challenges with soil and water, and more.

The Food Tank says solutions are needed, from schools and hospitals to fields and forests and from boardrooms to parliaments. The goal is to find ways to connect domestic and global issues, and the need for changing the metrics in how food security and nutrition are measured. A Change the Food System summit is planned in the future.

Fixing the system requires changing the conversation and finding ways to make food production—and consumption—more economically and environmentally sustainable and socially just.

“We’re trying to bridge the major disconnect between organizations that are fighting hunger and organizations that are fighting obesity,” Gustafson says. “The two groups have more in common than they think. The truth is we’re all fighting to get people access to nutritious food, no matter where they are in the world, but we need to be asking the right questions and developing the right metrics for today’s food system realities, not yesterday’s.”

Says Nierenberg: “Agriculture can be the solution to some the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges. Through our on-the ground-research, we have seen the impact that sustainable and diverse farming systems can have on health and nutrition, food security, and the livelihoods of farmers. We can create state-of-the-art sustainable farming systems by using a combination of traditional practices that have worked for hundreds years all over the world with modern eco-friendly technologies.”